


One Fixed Point in a Changing Age

by birdsmustland



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Basically them being bros., Gen, Mainly set pre series one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsmustland/pseuds/birdsmustland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You had been children when you met, all those years ago when everything seemed important yet nothing seemed to matter, not really. You met back when you were both still white blank pages, free of the years of other people’s words and the stains of experience. You could have been anyone. You could have been anything.</p><p>That was the start of it all. That was when you both began to define yourselves in terms of one another. That was when the threads of your lives became forever tied together. Until that day, you had merely been a child drifting through life, untethered and unsure. But suddenly you were no longer one. You were two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the [Teen Wolf Reverse Big Bang](http://twreversebang.livejournal.com) over on Livejournal. My artist's fabulous artwork can be found over [here](http://monkeyscandance.tumblr.com/post/41559171321/back-in-october-november-the-teen-wolf-reverse)
> 
> For those that are interested, the title comes from a line in 'The Last Bow' by Arthur Conan Doyle.

You had been children when you met, all those years ago when everything seemed important yet nothing seemed to matter, not really. You met back when you were both still white blank pages, free of the years of other people’s words and the stains of experience. You could have been anyone. You could have been anything.

_Batman_ , he had said one night when the twilight spread its inky darkness across the sky. _I want to be Batman._ A childish fantasy perhaps, the words of a child spoken with the certainty and surety of an adult, a certainty that he would never lose.

That Halloween he was Batman.

You were Robin.

Those words spilled across your pages, were inked indelibly across your hearts and into your bones. Scott is Batman. Stiles is Robin. It started then, back when the moon was full and you were both walking the streets of Beacon Hills on that oh so important quest for candy, the thrill of being allowed to do this alone for the first time making you both just as giddy as the sugar that thrilled through your veins.

It was only later, so much later that you had outgrown the tradition entirely that you found out that you hadn’t been as alone as you both had thought. Your parents had been watching after all. But that didn’t matter. In that moment, for those few hours you both felt invincible.

You _were_ Batman and Robin.

Nothing else mattered.

But that was the start of it all. That was when you both began to define yourselves in terms of one another. That was when the threads of your lives became forever tied together. Until that day, you had merely been a child drifting through life, untethered and unsure. But suddenly you were no longer one. You were two.

It was as intoxicating as it was terrifying. You had never had a friend before after all. Well, that wasn’t quite true, you supposed. There were people at school that you talked to, that you waved to in the store when you saw them. There were names that you recited to your parents when they asked about your day. But none of them had stayed. Sooner or later their names would fall from memory. Usually sooner rather than later if you were completely honest with yourself. You had seen the concern in your parents eyes when they asked how this boy was or when you had last seen that girl and you merely shrugged.

**_I don’t know. I…ah… we haven’t really talked in a while._ **

But then there was Scott and suddenly there was a vein of consistency running through your stories. His name was always there. _He_ was always there. It wasn’t until weeks later that it actually hit you that this must be what friendship was. It wasn’t until Scott had flung an arm around you one day and declared you to be his best friend that you realised.

He’d actually been trying to convince you to let him copy your homework tomorrow so he didn’t have to do it. That way, he could lie to his mom yet still technically be telling the truth when he told her he had no homework. All so he could come over. Even so, it had made your heart feel like it was about to burst from your chest. You couldn’t keep the grin off of your face and Scott had just laughed in the face of your honest confusion and delight, holding out half of a sandwich that had apparently been saved for this exact purpose. _Of course you are idiot. I don’t share my food with just anyone you know._ Again, the words of a child delivered with all the seriousness of an adult. But that did not make them any less true.

You had a best friend.

_You were somebody else’s best friend._

It was terrifying and amazing and relieving and fantastic and a good many other words besides. You had still been smiling when you had gotten home, not even the whispered comments abou t you and the snide little jabs from classmates enough to dampen the euphoria. Your mother had noticed of course, she was always the first to notice things like that. Your mother was the heart of your family, your father the logic and you, well, you weren’t quite sure what you were yet. All you knew was that you were part of it, that you were loved and in the end, surely that’s all that mattered.

**_I have a best friend. Scott is my best friend._ **

You had expected some sort of reaction, something of the same amazement you felt at the realisation to show on your mother’s face but it hadn’t. She had just smiled that smile of hers, the one that always made you think she knew something you didn’t. There was a softness in her eyes, something akin to relief perhaps buried deep beneath the affection but you were too happy to really consider what it might have meant. She simply ruffled your hair and pulled you into a quick hug despite your protests, half-hearted as they were.

She had not been surprised and when you both relayed the information to your father before he left for work that night, his smile had been just as soft as your mothers, something in his expression saying ‘about time’ even as his mouth formed other words, as he asked whether Scott would be coming over to ‘keep you out of trouble’ that night while he was at work. ‘Your mother needs a break after all…’

They had known long before you did that Scott was your best friend. It seemed like everyone knew before you did. It would have bugged you had it been anything else. You were normally so sharp, noticing things that other people did not, making leaps of logic that others did not and finding patterns where few could see them; an advantage of the ADHD you supposed, one of the few really if truth be told. But it didn’t. At least you realised, even if it had to be spelled out to you.

You had been eleven years old.

Even now you and Scott tell different stories when you’re asked how the pair of you became friends. His story comes years before yours, before even Batman and Robin.

  


> _It was the winter after my parents’ split for the first time. I was the new kid in town and that’s rough enough at the best of times never mind when you have to join a new school in the middle of the year._
> 
> _No one really wanted to talk to me, not then. They didn’t know who I was after all or where I fit. They needed to work that out first, get a measure of who I was or something. So there was just me…_
> 
> _Then there was Stiles, barrelling in as usual, some things never change after all. He was just as much an idiot then as he is now. I was sat on the steps by the main doors just watching. What else could a new kid do after all but watch and learn? Then he was just there, talking a mile a minute in his ridiculous hat…_
> 
> _- **Hey, that hat was awesome and you know it!**_
> 
> _…in his ridiculous hat and his mittens. I can’t even remember what you said to me now, but I remember you holding out your hand to me, grinning from ear to ear. Haven’t looked back since, though I have learned that when you smile like that, it can only mean trouble…_
> 
> _- **Screw you. It means that things are about to get awesome…**_
> 
> _Sure…awesome. That’s one word for ending up grounded for a month and a half…_
> 
> **_-One time… it was one time…_ **
> 
> _That year._

  


Scott rarely ever got to finish the story of how he thought you became friends. You could never help yourself, you just _had to_ comment and that more often than not derailed the conversation before it could reach its conclusion. You remember that day too, but you had never considered the possibility that it was the beginning of your friendship. It could not be that simple after all. Becoming someone’s friend surely had to take more work than that. It could not possibly be as simple as going over to the new kid and trying to include him.

He had looked so sad sitting there on his own just watching everyone else. You knew what it was like to be an outsider after all. Sure, you had been born in Beacon Hills, your father was the Sheriff which meant that everyone knew who you were, but that didn’t make you any less of an outsider, or if not an outsider, then a misfit. It was back before they had diagnosed you with ADHD, back when they thought that you were just badly behaved and unruly and children can be so very cruel to one another after all.

So you had taken it upon yourself to make Scott smile. A simple goal that had apparently been the beginnings of your friendship for him.

Sometimes you catch yourself wondering how it was that it took you so long to realise that he was your friend, _your best friend_. Looking back, it’s as clear as day now. But then again, at the time, there had been so many other things going on, so many other demands on your attention- the trips to the specialists, psychiatrists, meetings at school about your behaviour- that it was perhaps understandable that it escaped your notice completely.

You sometimes feel bad that it took so long for you to realise just how important to you Scott was, that it took you years to realise what he had intrinsically known that day when you were both eight years old. You told him as much one day, the first time you had both recounted the story of your friendship only to realise that you had approached it from different directions even if the end result was ultimately the same. He’d just smiled and shrugged.

_It doesn’t matter when we became friends; all that matters is that we are._

And with Scott, it really was that simple. Friendship was not something that needed to be acknowledged. There had been no need for some grand gesture or overblow expression of your friendship. It hadn’t even needed a shared label or even mutual acknowledgement. It just was and that was enough.

Your realisation came later than Scott’s, with Halloween and Batman and Robin on the horizon, just when you were beginning to define yourself in relation to him. It had long since ceased to surprise your parents if Scott came over just before dinner most nights. His mother worked nights at the hospital so she could be there before he went to school to make him breakfast and could be there when he got home. It wasn’t much but it worked and he had you which made it all the easier for them both. Scott had somewhere to go and Melissa knew that Scott was safe, that he was not at home alone.

When you tell your story, you can’t help but smile at the memory. It had not been a particularly remarkable night, nothing out of the ordinary had happened and yet it led to this seismic shift in how you viewed Scott and what he was to you. It wasn’t the definitive shift, when you would both finally cement the fact that you were best friends, when the idea finally settled into your very bones but it was the beginning.

  


> **_Comics. That was how we became friends. We were talking about comic books…_ **
> 
> _- You were talking, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways…_
> 
> **_That’s because you were talking rubbish and I was trying to educate you. Seriously, still can’t believe that you had never picked up a Green Lantern book, I mean dude, seriously?!. How did you even…anyway, WE were talking about comics, about how Superman really was kind of overrated. He has all those powers after all, the heat vision, the super-strength. For all that he plays at being human, he really isn’t. Lois is the real hero of those books in my eyes I mean…_ **
> 
> **_-_ ** _Not the issue here Stiles…_
> 
> **_What?_ ** _**Oh, yeah, anyway, we were talking about comics and then we got talking about the fact that we both liked Batman more because even with all the money and stuff, under it all, Bruce Wayne is just a man. He didn’t have to do what he did, he could walk away at any time, but he didn’t. That’s what makes a hero you know? Doing what you can even when you don’t have to, trying to make a difference as best you can without any special abilities.**_
> 
> **_Anyway, Batman and from there we were talking about Robin and how he was actually super necessary and just as important if not more so than Batman. He might just be a kid, but that didn’t matter. Batman needed him. Without him, there would be no Batman._ **
> 
> **_The Dynamic Duo…_ **

  


You always said the words ‘the Dynamic Duo’ like they somehow explained everything and for you, they did. But your story always seemed to make less sense than Scott’s did to everyone else. You were used to the looks of confusion, the rolled eyes and the mutterings of ‘geek’ that tended to follow when you explained that your friendship was founded on a shared love of comics. It was more than that, of course it was, but it had taken that discussion for everything to fall into place.

It wasn’t that your friendship _began_ that night, you realise that now. You had been friends long before that. It was more that that was the night that you began to see it as a friendship, that was when the label finally fit, when everything clicked in your brain. It had taken a rather heated discussion about the merits of various superheroes by torchlight, stretched out on your bed for you to realise, but it didn’t matter.

You had a friend.

_That_ was what mattered.

Your mother was the heart, your father the logic, Scott was the moral compass, the compassion and you? Well you were still unsure of where you fit, only that you did.

It made perfect sense therefore, for you to dress up as Batman and Robin for Halloween that year…just like it made sense for you to play Robin to Scott’s Batman. Robin was the cheerful one after all, the one who was always ready with some smart comment or other, not to mention he shared your love of terrible, terrible puns. For you to be Batman would have been wrong. Batman was dark and brooding after all and you, well, you were never serious if you could help it.  Not that Scott was particularly dark and brooding or even remotely intimidating, but he was the better choice.

Even back then that desire to protect, to keep everyone safe was there, just lurking beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment. Batman protected his city after all, wanted to keep everyone safe. Robin though, he kept Batman safe. He helped clean up Gotham but when all was said and done, he was there for Batman. He kept him human, kept him good.

That was what you did for Scott, what you still do, or at least you like to believe that. You like to believe that you are his moral compass of sorts, keeping him good, saying or doing the things he shouldn’t or perhaps won’t. You keep him good by crossing lines so he won’t have to.

The older you both got, the more you grew into your features and your friendship the more apparent it became that you had made the correct choice all those years ago. Scott has a tendency to get caught up in one thing after all, to lose himself in whatever it is that has his attention in that moment. You however, you see the bigger picture, pick up the slack and remember the finer details so he doesn’t have to.

The dynamic duo, that was what you became. Your father had jokingly called you that when the pair of you turned up at the station one night with a sandwich for him. He had said something about you being a perfect partnership, that you brought out the best in one another while balancing the worst. Scott gave you focus, you gave him freedom. Together you just _worked._

By the time you both started high school, the label had stuck. The dynamic duo. Scott and Stiles, rarely one without the other and on those rare occasions you were not together, you always knew where the other was. It had never been a conscious decision or effort, it was just how things were. It was perfectly normal for Scott to give you a heads up when he was going to be dropping by the hospital before coming home so just go on up to his room, just like you did not think anything of texting Scott to tell him that you were going grocery shopping so he should just let himself in, your mom wouldn’t mind after all. She’d missed him and would welcome the chance to catch up with him without Stiles there to run his mouth.

Scott became part of your family much like you became part of his. You both carved out a niche in the other’s life, filled a space that neither of you had even realised existed. The threads of your lives became so entangled that it looked to be impossible for you to ever truly separate again. Those once white blank pages are now filled with stories, each other’s stories etched into the very essence of who you are. They are no longer the stories of an individual, there is no longer Stiles story and Scott’s story. There is only _your_ story, your shared tale.

Never one without the other…

But sooner or later a new chapter had to start. Sooner or later there had to be a mistake, something that makes that narrative falter. There has to be a moment when everything changes.

It was only a matter of time. 


	2. Chapter 2

Scott has always been an idiot, that’s hardly news to anyone, hell, most people tarred you both with the same brush. Batman and Robin. Scott and Stiles, both as bad as one another and forever encouraging the other to go one better, to do more. You probably deserved a substantial amount of credit for that. Or blame, it all depended on your point of view.

It was just how your mind worked, you couldn’t help it. Once an idea took root in your brain you had to see it through. That tiny seed would grow, flower and blossom into something bigger than either of you could ever have imagined.

As you grew out of the softness of childhood, lingering on the verge of the awkwardness of adolescence, you both began to grow in to your personalities. Scott had always been laid back almost to the point of inertia. Were he to be any more relaxed, he would probably have gone through life near horizontal. He was quiet but it was not the quiet of a shy boy, it was the silence of a boy who knew who he was and where he fit. Back then, Scott had nothing to prove. That would change, of course, things always did. High school had a way of ferreting out every insecurity and stripping them bare, leaving them exposed like raw nerves.

But that is still to come, you are getting ahead of yourself, flicking through the pages of your lives in order to get to the good parts, or at least the interesting ones, skipping the bad. But life isn’t like a book, you can’t just skim over the parts you would rather not see. Life is not as ordered as a book; there is rarely a constant running through your entire life. People change, they grow apart or leave. Life is not as neat or as tidy as works on a page. It’s painful and complicated and messy and confusing and oh so difficult.

But for now, you have Scott

He is one of the few people outside your immediate family who has always been able to keep up with you, even before the medication. The almost manic edge that had plagued you and driven your teachers to distraction began to mellow as you got older, further softened by the medication that you had to take daily in order to keep yourself focussed, to stop your mind wandering down paths that only you could see. Well, you are _supposed_ to take it every day. But like any teenaged boy, what you are _supposed_ to do and what you _actually_ do are two very different things.

You take it when you remember, which is usually around one day in four. Or every other day should your parents be on your case for whatever reason. That only ever seemed to happen in the aftermath of an Incident, and yes, that capital letter is very necessary. You could hear the difference between the two, between a run of the mill incident that could happen to anyone and _an Incident_. Their voices changed, there was a heaviness to their words and a slump to their shoulders like they were so very tired, so close to giving up on you.

Parent-teacher conferences were the main reason for that slump, for the faint crease between their eyebrows and the worry hidden in the curve of their mouths. You hated that look. That look that said they were disappointed in you even if they never said the words.

You never saw that look on Scott’s face. Not back then at least, back when you were both virtually inseparable. You shouldn’t work, you know as much; by rights you are both too different but perhaps that was _why_ you work as well as you did. The threads of your lives, that had only threatened to entwine back when you were smaller, younger, were now woven tightly together, far too tight to ever truly separate completely without some terrible trauma. You would always be tied together, or at least you hoped as much. It may only be by a single thread, a single moment as the world continued to spin on but that would be enough. Or perhaps it would be by the intricate tapestry of meetings and games and tragedy and laughter that was the sum of your shared existence.

Perhaps if you were lucky, you would always be there at the end of it all. Stiles and Scott, Scott and Stiles; the last ones standing when the world crashed down and the smoke cleared, never one without the other. The very idea of anything else was foreign, sent a shiver of unease skating down the spines of Beacon Hills residents who happened across you when you were separated.

You were both so different, both in temperament and world view that you _should_ not work. But you did. Moments of discord were rare, fleeting. They flared white hot for a moment, but were little more than a spark which faded almost as quickly as it appeared. Being angry at one another was just never something that seemed to take. Neither of you could summon the will power required to stay angry in the face of the other.

That did not stop either of you trying though.

  


> _Do you remember the first time we ever argued? Someone asked me the other day how the hell it was that I managed to stay friends with you when you were so irritating…_
> 
> **_Love you too Scott._ **
> 
> _Shut your face. Not even you can argue that you’re not irritating at least some of the time… and before you say anything, yes, I will admit to the same. But that’s not the point here. They asked and I realised that we never really argue. Can’t remember the last time it was over something that really mattered._
> 
> **_Last night. You were insisting that Iron Man was the best Avenger. I was forced to correct you._ **
> 
> _About something that matters Stiles._
> 
> **_That does matter. I couldn’t have you go through your life labouring under that frankly wrong assumption._ **
> 
> _I hate you sometimes, you do realise that right?_
> 
> **_No you don’t, you love me. You’d be lost without me. Besides, you’ve never been able to go longer than a week without talking to me._ **
> 
> _No, I think you’re projecting. You’re the one that can’t help but talk to me. Every time I try to get rid of you, you just keep coming back like a bad penny._
> 
> **_I like to think I’m more like a boomerang._ **
> 
> _Oh my god, you are the worst human being I know…_

  


For what it is worth, you do remember the first time you argued, though the reason for it has long since been lost to time and consigned to history. It was such an insignificant little thing that recording the cause on the pages of your life hardly seemed worth it. No, you do not remember why you fought, only that you did.

‘The Great Week of Silence: Or the Week of Moping and Stupidity’, as it came to be known to your parents may now lack a cause, but you remember just how terrible it had been to not speak to Scott for a week. Neither of you were the sort to have a large group of friends after all and even if you had been, you each played such a big role in the others life that filling the void left by their absence would always have been something of an impossibility. There was no one to step into that breach and even if there had been you would not have wanted them too and could say with a degree of certainty that Scott would not have either.

But that was the thing about knowing someone as well as, if not better, than you know yourself- you know how they will react and you knew that Scott was just as unlikely as you were to apologise which meant that the whole experience was drawn out far longer than it needed to be. Had you both apologised when you realised you were wrong, then the Great Week of Silence would have been little more than the Great Hour of Silence, which was a whole lot less impressive (and would have been a whole lot less painful.)

You were both stubborn as mules and stood your ground and when the Great Silence finally broke, it was not with a bang, or with grins and ‘I told you I was right.’ It was not with some over-wrought apology. There was no apology. There was not time for it, nor was there really a need even if there had been.

No, it did not break with words, but when Scott turned up at your house one night, eyes bright and cheeks tearstained. In that moment, such things as your petty battle of wills were set aside without a thought. They did not matter. What mattered was that despite the fact that neither of you had said two words to one another in six days, seven hours and fifteen seconds (of course you had been counting), despite the fact that you had communicated with little more than glances and gestures for the best part of a week, Scott had come to you when he needed someone.

He had come to you because you were his best friend.

You may not remember what had started that first argument, but you would always remember how it ended. It ended when you bundled Scott into your house, ignoring your mother’s concerned expression and your father’s raised eyebrows. It had been getting late, you should have been considering sleep, not hurrying your best friend up to your room. You could see the protests forming on both their lips; the ‘Stiles, it’s late maybe Scott should…’ and the ‘Shouldn’t you be at home Scott?’ But neither of them gave  the thoughts voice, something you had been infinitely grateful for. One look at Scott and they had simply nodded.

You had spent the night talking in hushed tones, huddled beneath the blankets like they could protect you both from the world, like they could keep the words from escaping and the pain from reaching either of you. Just you, Scott and Stiles in the safe cocoon of the duvet. There you were both safe, nothing could hurt you. It took hours before Scott really started to talk. You had filled the silence with murmured half thoughts and barely formed observations, attempted to draw him into a debate as you flicked through the pages of a comic book, but nothing seemed to help.

It was only when the sun was beginning to peek through the gap in the curtains that he’d started talking. In slow, halting sentences and sounding so unlike himself it was true, but he was talking and for once you had stayed quiet. It was not the time for you to talk after all, but to listen. Scott needed to talk and you needed to know how to help him. So you had stayed silent, a hand resting lightly between his shoulder blades as he murmured words into the pillows, head turned away from you like he was ashamed, like he was trying to hide.

It broke your heart because Scott had never tried to hide anything from you before. It broke your heart that you couldn’t help him.

His father had walked out in the middle of a blazing row with him mother and this time was different. They had fought before after all, you’d heard them first hand not to mention been regaled with the highlights by Scott at fairly regular intervals. But this time had been different, you could see it in the way Scott’s hands shook as he twisted them in the sheets, in the set of his shoulders and the way he tucked himself in on himself like he wanted to disappear. _This time, I don’t think he’s going to come back._ Scott had whispered, scrubbing at his eyes. _They’re getting a divorce Stiles._

Your heart had stuttered in your chest and before you had fully considered the idea, you had thrown your arms around him with a murmured apology.

That was how your mother had found you both when she came in to wake you for breakfast, Scott having cried himself to sleep, your body curved protectively around him like you were trying to shield him, to protect him like he always had protected you. She had just looked at you both for a long moment, something fond yet so incredibly sad in her eyes before she realised you were awake and looking back at her. She knew. Melissa McCall had called in a panic not long after Scott had turned up on your doorstep. She knew and just ran a hand over your hair and left you both alone, to come down when you were ready.

Scott slept on even when hunger and a need to pee drove you from bed. It wasn’t until much later that he padded down the stairs to join you where you were curled up watching terrible weekend daytime television, his eyes still red, but looking a little less shaky than he had. He just flopped down on the sofa beside you much like he usually did, like there was nothing wrong.

But the way his hand found your sleeve, just holding the fabric between his fingers spoke volumes. He wasn’t okay, even if he was pretending to be and _that_ was okay.

Your mother hadn’t asked when she came home from the store and your father barely batted an eyelid when he came home from work to find you both subdued and quiet on the sofa. You loved them both more than ever in the aftermath of Scott’s world changing. They had simply set another place at the table, adjusted the rhythm of their lives to accommodate him, not that it was much a stretch given the amount of time Scott had already spent with you all. He simply slotted into your lives like he had always been there, like he belonged.

And he did. He was your best friend, there was and there always would be a place for him in your life and home even as his own seemed to be falling down around his ears. _Especially then._

Something changed between you then, the plates had shifted once again, the pages of your lives were reordered, rearranged into something else, something other than friends. Something more. He wasn’t just your best friend.

He was your brother. You were family in every way that mattered.

Your mother was the heart, your father the logic, Scott was the moral compass, the compassion and you? Even then you still did not know quite where you fit, only that you did. Perhaps that was your role. You weren’t meant to be anything remarkable, but to just be there, to be the one holding the rest of the family together. You were the glue.

Then one day your family lost its heart; one morning you woke up and your mother was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

When your world changed, it was not with a bang. It was with a whimper, a barely there sound that no one else notices. Your world shifts on its axis but the wider world goes on unhindered, unchanged and uncaring. Everything that mattered changed for you yet the world remained the same. The sun rose, the sun set, people came and people went.

But nothing was the same anymore. She was gone and you didn’t know what to do.

  


> _The day your mum died Stiles… Christ that was one of the worst days of my life too. I mean, she wasn’t my mother, I know that but she felt like she was. She had done so much for me that losing her… it hurt like losing family and seeing you… your dad. I didn’t know what to do. The looks on both of your faces… God I thought I was going to lose both of you too. I think I did lose you for a while. Those first few days… you just weren’t there. Nothing I did seemed to help and I hated that. I hated that you were hurting and I could do nothing to help…_
> 
> _You are usually so easy to read, at least I think you are at any rate. Your flailing, anyone that knows you knows that there is more to it than that. There are patterns there, there’s a rhythm and that gives you away long before your voice does surprisingly enough. It’s always easier to watch what you do rather than what you say. You’re far too good at hiding behind your jokes after all._
> 
> _But your hands. Your hands never lie._
> 
> _Watching you with those photos that day…God it hurt. You needed me, that much I knew. You were saying something, screaming it with the frantic movement of your hands but I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know what you were saying.._

  


You were on your own in the house. Your father, he was never one for shows of emotion so you were hardly surprised when he dropped you off at home and headed for the station, barely even looking at you. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, you knew that even then. You had always known that he loved you. He may not hug you all that often, but it was impossible to miss the love in his eyes, the affection in his hand on your shoulder, the tiny smiles he would try to hide behind the rim of his coffee mug when you said or did something ridiculous. Even when he was punishing you; grounding you or otherwise berating you for whatever recklessness you and Scott had indulged in that week, you knew he loved you.

He didn’t leave you alone because he didn’t love you. He left because he loved her so much and he didn’t want you to see him break. He did it, because he wanted to appear to be the strong one for your sake, even though his entire world had fallen apart around him that day. You could see it in his eyes, the sheer depth of pain that was there, the tears that were building and threatening to fall from already reddened eyes; the slight tremor in his hands on the steering wheel and to his lip as he drove back from the hospital in silence.

You longed to reach for him, to hug him, to hold him close and bury your face against his shoulder like you always had when you were younger, letting the scent of his cologne and _home_ comfort you, his arms around you warm and secure and safe. But you didn’t. Bridging that gap, reaching across the console seemed impossible. There seemed to be an immense gulf between the pair of you, a distance that had never existed before.

You didn’t know what to do or how to help him.

You didn’t know how to help yourself.

You could barely breathe around the lump in your throat, could barely see through the tears that blurred your vision and made the sitting room swim. You just wanted it to stop. For the first time in your life, your mind was silent. There was nothing and that terrified you. The silence scared you because it was something so alien to you. Silence was not comforting. It was terrifying. It was silent.

Your mother was dead.

You were alone.

Until you weren’t.

Scott was there, like he always was.

Just Scott.

He was the one that would be left protecting the pages this time. You had the pages of his parent’s divorce hidden within the story of your life, protecting him in the only way you could and this time, it was his turn. You would never get to see the pages again clearly, not unless you asked him. It might have been part of your life, your story, but you would not be the one to tell it. That duty would fall to Scott.

You could only hope that his handwriting improved.

  


> **_“Did you know that there are people who believe a photo caputres the soul? For them it’s like this terrible thing, the worst possible thing that you could ever do. It’s like you’ve trapped that person in the photo, like you’ve taken something from them that they will never get back…” _**He smoothed his fingers over the pages of the album, the motion sharp and jittery.  Stiles was usually in constant motion, the motion itself was not unusual. What was, was the fact that there was no pattern to it.
> 
> Usually when his friend fidgeted, there was a pattern, some underlying system to it. Like when he was bored, he would always tap his fingers in a certain rhythm against the desk or his leg. That pattern would change when he was thinking about something or when he was worried or happy or distracted. Hell, there was even a pattern for when he wasn’t really thinking about anything at all and his mind was pleasantly blank. He didn’t see that one all that often, but he knew it existed.
> 
> It was how he interpreted the mystery that was Stiles. It was what made reading his friend so much easier. It was how he always seemed to know. Stiles seemed like this great enigma to the world at large. The constant stream of thoughts given voice, the distraction that his over-active mind and mouth provided meant that most people underestimated him or didn’t really pay attention to _him._ They paid attention to his words, to the jokes, to his expressions.
> 
> They didn’t realise that Stiles could lie as easily as breathing. He could hide his true thoughts so deeply beneath that stream of consciousness that most people would never know. They would pick up on the wrong things. Or he could school his expression into something utterly at odds to the feelings swelling in his chest. He could hide it all behind a laugh, a smile, a bad joke.
> 
> But his hands never lied.
> 
> The truth was always there plain as day. You just needed to know how to interpret it.
> 
> He’d never seen this particular pattern before. The sharp, almost desperate movements of his fingers over the photographs was new to him. For the first time in a long time, he had no idea what was going on in his friends head. He could guess, of course he could, but guessing was unreliable at the best of times and with Stiles it was downright useless. The paths of his friends mind were a tangled snarl. He would make leaps that others wouldn’t, jumps of logic that no one else could see. It was one of the reasons Scott loved him. Stiles didn’t so much think outside the box as deconstruct the box entirely and make it into something new.
> 
> He didn’t know what to do and Stiles was not making it any easier for him. He knew his friend must be hurting, but he didn’t know how to help. He had no way in, no way to begin untangling the knotted mess of his thoughts to comfort him. He hated it. So he did the only thing he could. He waited, his knees occasionally brushing against Stiles as they sat cross-legged, facing one another on the battered sofa in the Stilinski living-room. The distance between them was a scant few inches but it felt like they were separated by an entire ocean. It would be so easy for him to bridge the gap, to reach across that void and touch, offer comfort through proximity, a hand on his shoulder, on his knee or to lean across and press his forehead to Stiles. Casual touch was an intrinsic part of their relationship after all. Words were not always what was needed. Over the years they had crafted an entire language that was theirs and theirs alone. A language built from gestures and subtle changes of expressions, of touch and shifts in position.
> 
> But this was something new. They hadn’t factored something like this into its creation. So he was left with words, a tool that felt clumsy and unwieldy when it came to Stiles.
> 
> He could say something, fill the eerie silence that had begun to stretch between them, distorting the air in a way that silence never had before, not for them. But he didn’t. What could he say other than ‘I’m sorry’? Sorry wasn’t enough for something like this. Apologies seemed hollow in the face of the sheer cruelty that was an inescapable part of life.
> 
> So he waited, eyes darting between Stiles face and his fingers as they continued to trace the photos. Scott knew the photos like the back of his own hand. He had taken his fair share of them actually over the years. Pictures of the people that had become as good as a family to him. Pictures of Stiles, of the Sheriff, of Stiles and him mom, of them all. Back when they were happy.. Back before the universe played its cruel joke.
> 
> **“People that say that… they don’t know what they’re talking about…”** Stiles picked up the thought that Scott had thought long-lost, his voice tight, shaking from the effort of forming the words and forcing them from dry lips. **“Not really.”** His gaze lifted briefly to meet Scott’s gaze before drifting back to the photos once again, or perhaps to watching the movement of his own fingers, Scott wasn’t entirely sure and it didn’t really matter either way. He shifted so his knees were pressed to his friends, a constant pressure, a grounding force now that the silence that had tethered them together was broken. **“They’re not a bad thing… they’re… they’re a _good thing._ They’re a second chance…”** his voice cracked, hands finally pausing, clenching into fists atop the paper. **“They’re a second chance to know someone who’s gone… They give you that chance… how could that be a bad thing?”**
> 
> He looked at Scott again, his expression anguished and so lost that it broke Scott’s heart a little to see. Stiles, the one who had been there for him through his parent’s divorce, who had always seemed so solid, so reliable was breaking before his eyes, slowly unravelling and he had no idea what to do. Stiles was always so much better at this sort of stuff, at knowing what to do or say. Without him, Scott floundered and he knew it. He had a habit of doing the wrong thing, of putting his foot in his mouth. Now though, Stiles needed him.
> 
> He doubted there was anything he could do that could make this situation worse. This was life at its cruellest.
> 
> With a low, distressed noise he finally moved, finally bridged that gap between them, dragging Stiles close, wrapping his arms tightly around his friend, ducking his head to murmur nonsense against the shell of his ear. _“It isn’t Stiles. It’s the best thing in the world. They can never take her away from you you know? Not really…”_
> 
> It was like a dam breaking. With a whimper, Stiles arms locked around him, his hands clutching tightly at the fabric of Scott’s shirt. He could feel the tell-tale dampness of tears against his neck, the familiar burn of his own tears building in his throat. He wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Stiles, his dad, his mom, they were some of the best people that Scott had ever known. They were _good_ people. They did not deserve this. It wasn’t fair. He swallowed down the rage, stroking his hand over Stiles short hair. This at least was familiar. He remembered Stiles doing this for him when he had finally cried in the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. He remembered the comfort that it had brought him.
> 
> He only hoped it could do a fraction of that for Stiles.
> 
> _“I’m here Stiles. I’ve got you… You’ve still got me.”_
> 
> That was how the Sheriff found them when he finally came back to the home he had made with the woman they had all lost. His son curled up small against his best friend who was still just a boy himself yet had done something that he could not bring himself to do just yet. Not while the pain was so fresh and the grief so raw. He couldn’t bring himself to hug the boy who had his wife’s eyes and her smile. He couldn’t bring himself to comfort him because he reminded him so starkly of everything he had lost.
> 
> So he let Scott, nodded to the boy who had an arm curled protectively around his son’s thin shoulders as he all but fled from the room filled with memories of the life he had crafted with a woman who had been taken from them far too soon.

  


You have never thanked Scott for staying with you during those first few weeks after her death. You wanted to, even tried a couple of times, but Scott always just cut you off with a smile and a hand on your shoulder or a careless arm thrown around you as he ruffled hair. You didn’t need to thank him. It was just how things worked between you.

You had both been there through the worst moments in your lives so far. There was no need for thanks, not for that.

They were family after all.

Being there was what family did.


	4. Chapter 4

But life had a way of playing tricks on you, of uprooting you and making you reconsider even those truths that you believed to be utterly unshakable. Though in this case, it wasn’t so much life as high school.

High school was, as clichéd as it sounded, where everything changed again and the lives you had built in the aftermath of tragedy were shaken to their cores. High school was hell on Earth for most people yet for some reason the myth persisted that they were the best years of your life and if you found that you were not enjoying them you were made to feel like some sort of freak of nature. Not that that was anything new to you. You had long since gotten used to the glances out of the corner of eyes or the mutters as you passed. Despite the medication, despite being calmer than you had ever been, you were still different. You were still too weird to ever really be considered ‘popular.’

Not that you cared about popularity. You never really had. It wasn’t something you needed. You much prefer being able to just go about your life in the way that you saw fit and given who your father is, well, it was pretty much a given that you were never going to be among the popular crowd. Even those kids who had not known you from when you were small knew who your father was and being the child of the Sheriff pretty much guaranteed that you were left out of any of the excitement that high school brought.

They had no guarantees after all, that you would not just turn them over to your father should they invite you to a party with underage drinking; they could not be sure that you would just turn a blind eye to any other indiscretions or experiments that were part and parcel of being a teenager. So they just did not invite you. You became something of a social pariah without ever really having to try or even open your mouth.

You were used to being on the outside looking in, but that usually only happened after you said or did something particularly stupid or when you let your mouth run away from you. Somewhere down the line, your father being the Sheriff shifted from being something other kids found so incredibly cool, to being something terrible, to being the worst possible thing ever. But it was their problem, not yours.

You were still so incredibly proud of your father, loved that he did what he did. It might mean that you saw him far less than perhaps you would like, but at the same time, you knew he was making a difference. You knew that what he was doing mattered. So what if he missed some things, or wasn’t there when you came home early one day, vision blurring from a headache that made it feel like your brain was trying to force its way out of your skull. What did it matter if the only time you had with him some weeks was in those early hours of grey dawn where you would fix him a cup of coffee and you would both just sit there, you with your breakfast and him with his coffee and his newspaper. Neither of you would say anything. He would just clap a hand on your shoulder and squeeze gently as he passed you on his way out the door.

It wasn’t much. But it was enough for both of you Even if you were terrified that one day he wouldn’t come home; that there would be a day in the not too distant future when you would come home to find one of the other cops who worked with him sitting in a patrol car out front, or perhaps on the front porch, their radios muted and twisting their badges between their hands as they had to break the news that they had lost one of their own.

_I’m sorry Stiles,_ they would say, an apologetic quirk to their lips, a faint tremor in their hands as they reached out to clap him on the shoulder just as dad would, as they sought to comfort you even though they knew there was nothing they could do. You dreaded that day. It probably seemed ridiculous to anyone who did not have a relative who constantly put themselves in the line of fire; to someone who had not already lost one parent and so was desperately clinging to what he had left.

So you tried not to think about it because when you did, you could not breathe. But you managed to convince your father to allow you to have a police scanner. He no doubt thought that it was part and parcel of being a teenager, your curiosity and slightly morbid fascinations getting a little out of hand but he indulged you on the understanding that you would do nothing with what you over heard, that you would not start stalking crime scenes or anything like that and on the promise that you would actually do your homework for once rather than simply ignoring the growing stack of papers that threatened to almost completely hide your desktop.

It was a price worth paying even if your father did not truly understand the reasons behind it or at least you told yourself he didn’t. He was far too perceptive however to be so blind to your motivations. Though then again, since your mother had died, he had always had something of a blind spot when it came to you. When you lost her, it was like you both lost parts of yourselves. You went from understanding one another to feeling like strangers in your home. It was not a pleasant feeling but neither of you knew how to fix it.

So you muddled on.

You didn’t ask for the scanner so you could eavesdrop on crime scenes, or at least not entirely. You’re a teenaged boy, of course there was an almost voyeuristic element to your request. You were curious, wanted to know what it was that your father did, what it was that had taken him further and further from you over the years, though you did your best to quash that particularly vindictive little voice.

He was making a difference. That should be enough.

And it was. Most of the time.

 But sometimes, once in a blue moon, it wasn’t. It was nowhere near enough. Sometimes you couldn’t convince yourself that it was worth it, that he would be okay. There were some days when you could not breathe around the lump in your throat and the crushing fear that banded around your chest. Some days it wasn’t enough to tell yourself that he was going to be okay. The words were not enough. That was why you wanted the scanner.

Not to eavesdrop because you got a thrill out of the criminality, but to make sure that your dad was okay. You wanted it, so that you would know one way or the other whether he would be coming home or if you would be receiving a visit from a colleague delivering the worst news that they ever had to deliver to a person.

And even that was not enough sometimes. There were days, moments when the fear would skate down your spine and wrap around your heart, refusing to let go. It would press on your chest and force the air from your lungs until you were gasping and shaking under the weight of ‘what if.’ What if your dad was hurt while you were at school, while you were away from the scanner and couldn’t keep an eye on him.

What if…what if… what if.

That was why you started playing lacrosse, or least part of the reason. Scott was the sporty one of the pair of you. You were more the information guy, the one with all the answers or at least an answer for every occasion even if it was not always correct or even appropriate or looked for. When he had asked for your help to train one summer, out of what you believed to be a misplaced desire to prove himself; he had nothing to prove after all, did he not realise that? Why were you the only one that could see that beneath it all, Scott was a decent guy and a good friend. Sure, he could be an ass at times and his decision making was often worse than yours and that was saying something. But he was a good guy.

You had no real desire for more friends, for popularity or to be noticed, but you couldn’t understand how Scott managed to go unnoticed save for all the wrong reasons.

But your friend had looked at you, his jaw set in a way that clearly said ‘I’m doing this no matter what’ so you figured it would be easier for all concerned if he agreed to help from the get go. Left to his own devices, well, Scott was bound to only make the situation worse for himself.

It was only supposed to be for the summer. You spent your days running drills and helping Scott practice his passes, devised a regime to help him improve his game. A favour, that was all it was supposed to be but somewhere down the line, it started to mean something to you too. You started to enjoy it despite yourself, even if you complained as loudly as you could whenever you had the opportunity. It kept you out of your head, stopped you from worrying about your dad every waking minute.

When the pair of you collapsed down on the sofa, sweaty and out of breath after coming home from practice, you were able to smile, to laugh and joke and just be for once. Lacrosse was Scott’s way to fit in, for you, it was an escape.  You were no great shakes and you knew it but that was not the point, was never the point. While being nothing but a glorified benchwarmer had not been your plan, it was better than nothing.

And you still had Scott.

  


> **_Dude, what were you trying to do, catch the ball or impersonate a windmill Scott?_ **
> 
> _Shut up Stiles, and I thought you were supposed to be helping me not mocking me?_
> 
> **_I am helping you. The mocking potential is just a fantastic bonus. Ow! What was that for? There’s no way that joke deserved a lacrosse ball to the knee Scott, no sir._ **
> 
> _If you don’t shut up, it will be a lacrosse ball to some other part of your anatomy Stilinski._
> 
> **_Like you could manage that. The fact that your first shot even managed to hit my knee was more luck than intent._ **
> 
> _Like you could do any better._
> 
> **_Yet you asked me for my help… now shut up and let me do the job you asked me to do McCall._ **
> 
> _I could ask someone else for help… wouldn’t have to put up with being insulted like this._
> 
> **_Sure you could Scott but you ought to know that I’d just come back. Boomerang remember?_ **
> 
> _I can’t believe you still remember that…_

  


 

Lacrosse gave you both space to be and breathe away from the other pressures of your lives. It gave you the chance to fill more of the pages of the story of your lives with jokes and laughter and _hope,_ offsetting and overlaying the tragedy and pain and fear that had made up far more of your short lives than it should.

But of course it could not last. Life had a way of exploiting weaknesses, of upsetting your equilibrium just when you had finally gotten your feet under you once again. You had just began to hope again, to enjoy your life again and just be. After your mother’s death, you had pulled away from everything, been so consumed by the crushing fear of losing your dad, of losing Scott or someone else that you cared for that you had pulled away.

You were the glue that held everything together and without you your family crumbled. There were cracks in the foundations, but it was not beyond repair. Something could be salvaged from the wreckage, something new could be built, stronger than before. But it took time and just when you were starting to believe that things were going to be okay, the world decided to throw yet more complications your way.

  


> **We’ll be fine Scott, you’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it.**
> 
> This isn’t something you can fix Stiles, I’m a freaking werewolf. How the hell is anything about that fine, how is any of this okay?
> 
> **It will be fine. You’ll see and even if it’s not? You’ve still got me. Stuck with me remember?**

  


 

Yes, Scott still had you.

But did you still have him?

The words on the pages that made up the story of your lives stuttered, ink splattered over the white blank pages but there were no longer any words. Just swirling daubs of black ink that meant nothing and everything all at once.

_You still have me._

Once upon a time he would have believed that to be the one constant of his life. Now though, he wasn’t so sure.


End file.
